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are two key ones. Food is just too basic to a country's security and sovereignty, to leave to chance. And farmers are hit harder by chance than any other vital natural resource--and face it every season. A spell of bad weather; a plague of pests or blight--and they're belly up, in one season, without government supports and loans.
The malefactor is BIG CORPORATE AGRICULTURE--corruption, lobbying, their takeover of the subsidies and other supports (tax write-off's)--resulting in items like Chevron Corp. owning millions of acres of rice production land in California, and not only getting billions in subsidies and tax write-off's, but also sucking up the water, and polluting water and ground.
Then BIG AG takes the surpluses and dumps them on the market, at cheap prices, in third world countries, literally to destroy local agriculture there. I saw a documentary about Jamaica a while ago, where U.S. Big Ag dumped cheap powdered milk on Jamaica's market, and bankrupted all of its domestic FRESH milk and dairy producers. They lost their farms, their livelihoods and are losing their knowledge (can't pass it on to their children), and the country lost food self-sufficiency. This tragedy was repeated with other products there, and it is repeated world over--throughout Central and South America, and in Asia and Africa.
There are also many OTHER reasons for protecting domestic food production. It's the best way to prevent being poisoned. It's the best way for consumers to know where their food came from, and what practices were used to produce it--and the closer to home the better. In France, for instance, they hugely subsidize their farmers, because the French will not tolerate poisoned, non-fresh, non-organic food. It is a cultural and dietary necessity.
I read an amusing story of British doctors visiting France to study the French health system. They were curious that the hospitals that they visited had no big refrigerators in their kitchens. "How do you keep your food fresh for your patients?" the British doctors asked. They got blank stares at first, until somebody finally understood and said, "We wouldn't think of giving our patients anything but FRESH food--right off the farm!"
That's why France subsidizes its farmers. It is a cultural value, a health value, a taste value--as well as a security issue.
One more thought on the security issue: What if you import a lot of your basic foods from a country that turns against you? The importing country then holds a sword over your head.
Food production--like clean water, clean air, forests, watersheds, seed- and bio-diversity, and (in the opinion of many countries in the world) other natural resources such as oil and mineral wealth--belong to everyone, and underpin the political and economic health, and the stability, of the country. A country is called a "country" because of farming. Cities didn't use to be included in that designation because food wasn't produced in the cities; it was produced in the "countryside." The country (farming) is the backbone of the nation. Your viability as a nation is dependent on the ability of the countryside to feed everyone. And that must be protected--subsidized, prevented from failing.
There are vital reasons to help farmers and prevent them from failing. What is NOT necessary--and, indeed, what is grievously damaging--is Big Corporate Agriculture, with its monopolistic practices (truly predatory in the case of Monsanto), its use of pesticides, its mono-culture, its destruction of small farmers, and its devouring of our tax dollars and complete domination of our government.
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